Merry Christmas from all of us at Crop Drop

Thank you for another year of making sustainable food happen in Haringey.

To all our customers, drop point hosts and loving supporters cheering us on from the sidelines, we're eternally grateful for your support.

Whether local organic food is a way of life for you or you're just open and curious enough to give it a go, you're helping to create a food system that's fairer, more compassionate and ultimately sustainable for generations to come. You really make the difference in every trip you make to your drop point, every seasonal meal you cook, every bag you return to us, every conversation you have about us with friends. These are acts of a food citizen, not a faceless consumer.

We get the food system that we're willing to pay for and sadly the majority of the agriculture in this country is in crisis – biodiversity is plummeting, soil fertility is at a critical point and the ‘Tesco-ization’ of farming is squeezing out small-medium scale farms. There are complex forces at play here but a lot of it comes down to the price farmers are paid for their produce - the farm gate price - which has been too low for too long. At Crop Drop we pay two to four times the market price to our farmers. That doesn't mean you're being charged that much more, we absorb most of those costs (no CEO bonuses or shareholders to pay here!) Our farmers are just being paid the price they need to produce food sustainably.

In every veg bag you buy you're paying for Sarah Green to increase wild bird populations and convert more land to organic every year. You're paying for Martin at Ripple Farm to provide great working conditions and maintain rich, biodiverse soils. You're helping to establish a new urban farming cooperative, London Grown - nearly everything they grew this year was eaten by Crop Droppers!

While this kind of localised trade and agroecological farming is still very niche, but the movement it gathering speed and, along with our friends and partners, Growing Communities, OrganicLea and the Better Food Traders, we're proving that another kind of food system is possible, that doesn't pollute the envrionment, kill off wildlife and exploit workers. It takes a special kind of person to commit to a quirky old system like ours. Crop Droppers really are a special breed of brilliant. And our drop point hosts, the independent businesses and community centres that provide space for no financial gain, in the spirit of making a good thing happen, are another essential part of this system. We couldn't do it without you!

So whatever you're doing for Christmas, whether you're celebrating or not and whatever you're cooking we wish you all the happiness, peace and prosperity you deserve in 2018.

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This veg box scheme was launched with help from the Growing Communities Start-up Programme which aims to transform the food system by helping people set up local, sustainable vegetable box schemes across the country.